"A few weeks ago, the OpenBSD Project announced that the Portable C Compiler had been added to the OpenBSD source tree. There has already been some explanation of why the traditional GNU Compiler Collection is troublesome and why a new compiler is needed, but there are still some details left uncovered. In this interview, Theo de Raadt and Otto Moerbeek of the OpenBSD Project offer more information about PCC and GCC and where they are headed within the project."

The problem is that if you need/want to fix a bug in GCC, you then have to assign Copyright to the FSF and a submit to the GPL.

Both of these measures are kludges to overcome the practical incompatibilities between open-source software and copyright law. The legal framework wasn't designed for works that may have thousands of copyright owners claiming partial ownership of various overlapping fragments. It wasn't designed for works where there is great value in small modifications. It wasn't designed for works that can be copied and redistributed extremely inexpensively. It wasn't designed for works that retain much of their value when obfuscated.

Neither the GPL nor copyright assignment are perfect solutions, but neither is the BSD. The GPL is a compromise of freedom vs. regulation to the extent that such regulation promotes freedom with a bias toward users. The BSD is an unregulated free market with no incentives or restrictions to innovation.

Think of proprietary software as fascism, the GPL as socialism, and the BSD as libertarianism. All of these political systems have their problems. Fascism doesn't end well. Libertarianism doesn't start well. Socialism doesn't work well. However, the GPL is really a mixed economy, a blend of socialism and capitalism, and most progressive economists agree that mixed economies are more prosperous and sustainable than any purebred economic system. They might not grow like fascism, empower like libertarianism, or nurture like socialism, but they provide a reasonable balance of these qualities.

You can call into question the center of this balance, but it is absurd to argue against the notion of balance. The BSD economy never really took off because corporations want incentives and users want protections. Perhaps the ideology is more important than the outcome, and I can respect that as long as this is understood as a social experiment rather than a practical software ecosystem.

The GPL ecosystem is what it is because it grows, empowers, and sustains. It's a practical framework, and as the proprietary ecosystem realizes its ultimate problem of sustainability, it will become the dominant framework for software development. With increased dominance will come increased growth (more incentive to contribute) and empowerment (more compatible code) with no loss of sustainability.

Hopefully our politics will soon benefit from the lessons learned in the software industry, rejecting ideology and embracing balance. Hopefully we will spend more time debating this balance and less time refusing to compromise. Balance is not a "Trojan Horse" of the opposing ideology. It's an essential equilibrium, and one that we must actively pursue--using rational argument, if we please.